Friday, November 17, 2006

Another Sign of Blair's Disappearing Authority

How on earth does this woman keep her job? Margaret Hodge was, until the last election the Minister for Children. This, despite her having run a Labour Council at the centre of child abuse allegations. Today she has laid into Tony Blair for Iraq, despite being a senior Minister of State in his government. She equated his foreign policy to "moral imperialism". We should remember this isn't the first time she has shot her mouth off and yet she still hasn't been sacked. This is not a sign of magnanimity on Tony Blair's part - it's a sign of his disappearing authority that Ministers seem now to believe that they can ignore the Ministerial Code almost at will.

Great post. Hodge is really incompetent and quite sinister that is if she wasn't so useless. She once spoke to a forum I was at, and was amazing she actually argued that democracy and choice between the parties was incompatible.

Blair failure to silence his critiques may be a sign of weakness. But the real moral failure has been made by the Labour party who has allowed Blair to wage a war on a false pretext and then not resign.

Any Tory leader would have been toast under similar circumstances. And the independent membership would have finished him/her off - if the MP's didn't get him/her first.

But so many of NuLabour's placemen have been promoted so far over their pay grade in normal life that they are desperate to hold onto the privileges they gain in power for themselves.

Being in the Labour party now means that you have achieved Bernard's(yes minister) ideal state of becoming a 'moral vacuum'. They are moral cowards who have failed their party and worse the country.

No, if Blair starts sacking these loyalists it'll draw yet more attention to his weakness. And, given the rate at which all the rats are leaping overboard, he wouldn't have a Cabinet left by Christmas.

Margarent Hodge has always repulsed me even more than cringing buffoons like Dobson because of her quite unprincipled toadying up to the KGB while was accepting their bribes as a senior Communist lackey in CND.

Doesn't that look appalling in black and white? But is anyone going to prove it wrong?

Did you notice that although her remarks were taken down in shorthand by a journalist who checked his notes with two other people who were also present, Margaret Hodge denies saying what is attributed to her.

What she said is right though, it's nothing to be ashamed of, is it? However, she seems to have denied making this statement, seemingly concerned by the control-freakery of Downing Street: speak the truth according to Blair otherwise you're out. But as trumpeter says, witnesses say they heard here say this. So perhaps she is telling pork pies? Dishonesty? Nothing like a bit of that from a Minister.

Hodge, like some other members of the Government, keeps her job against logical expectations because she knows where bodies are buried. The webs of corruption that spread out from Labour town halls over several decades are extensive & intertwined.